Paul Klee at the Pompidou, by Larry Kilman

Paul Klee at the Pompidou
 
There is a tendency to say, "I could do this,"
stick figures after all, colour fields, geometrics
seemingly simple, innocent and elementary.
 
Klee as an adult discovered a cache of drawings
made when he was five. His mother saved his artwork,
couldn’t bear to part with it, a mother’s pride.
Did she know the future of her little genius?
 
Or did Klee’s excitement at his forgotten sketches, before the years of study,
free him once again to pursue the pleasure
and recapture the child’s grace informing his later work? 
Did he find his way by looking to the past, when he was happiest?
Study can turn us away from what we love, making work of it.
 
At the bottom of a trunk I find a drawing, a painting really,
you had done in second grade, a young girl flying a kite,
clearly the work of a child, yet the wind is real
as it blows her skirt, you can hear it through the trees,
feel the kite straining against the cord, lifting her arms to heaven.
I too couldn’t part with it, creation of my creation.
Looking at it now, after all these years, 
I see the promise beyond pride, see the potential.
 
Who knows what sends you down one road and not another.
If only you had taken a different path, my little genius.
 
Larry Kilman 

​Larry Kilman is an American poet and journalist from New York who has spent more time outside of the US than within, living in Paris, Hong Kong, Munich, Frankfurt and currently in Johannesburg, none of it planned. He is therefore a believer in the power of serendipity and being open to the unexpected. His poetry has been influenced by this experience.